Dear Readers: During the busy holiday season and throughout the year, I hope you find my six guidelines for giving and receiving gifts make giving and getting gifts more fun and enjoyable for your child, as well as for your child’s gift givers. 1. Help your child create a “gift wish list.” At a very […]
Tag: Relationships
We all need human connection, although we don’t always do our best to cultivate and foster the relationships we value so much. Stable relationships form in infancy. A child’s earliest relationships with caregivers and family members shape her future connections. Read from the Mommybites Relationships archive. From advice for new moms, to marital relations, to relationships within an extended family, you’re sure to find something beneficial.


Mom Moments Frozen in Time
One of my favorite pictures of my son and me was taken right after his nap, with him snuggling on my lap. Neither of us knew that the picture was being taken, but every time I look at that photo I think of how peaceful and content we both look. I literally want to drink […]

Helping Parents Raise Good People
Thanks to my daughter’s occasional – OK, almost daily – 30 minute DVD or TV breaks, she knew her ABCs and 123s in English, Spanish and Sign Language by the time she was three. She learned why bananas turned brown (from Sid the Science Kid) and the sequence of how to get to the golden […]

Rain in Our Children’s Lives
One of the hardest parts about being a parent is seeing your children in pain. Not just physical pain, but emotional pain. Seeing the hurt expressions on their little faces if they have been teased or excluded. Wanting them to go through life and only be happy, but knowing this is impossible. That is why […]

Grandparents Grapple With Question: Is Santa Claus Real?
We have two grandchildren, five-year-old Danny, and three-year-old Jessie. We live near them and spend a lot of time with them. As we head into the holidays, here’s our problem. Our daughter-in-law Bethany “does Santa” in a big way, e.g., leaving cookies and milk out for him, planting reindeer hooves marks in the yard, having […]

My Best Self: How Sports Transformed Me
By Martin Shore This is the story of my life and my relationship to sports. I was born in Argentina in 1987 to a family of musicians, journalists and doctors who were far from being athletes. The only sport my father ever played was chess – so, as soon as I was two feet tall, […]

Grandparents and Grandchildren Help Us Smile
Dear Readers, Because so many of you are facing extraordinary challenges as a result of Hurricane Sandy, I want to use this column to help you smile, however briefly, by sharing some humor from grandparents and grandchildren. (I thank my dear friend GP for sending these to me.) Message on Grandparents’ Answering Machine Good morning […]

Reflecting on the Jersey Shore
In the aftermath of Sandy, I can’t stop thinking about the Jersey Shore. I grew up in MA and it was not until I met my husband (a Jersey guy) that I had ever been to the state of NJ. Although it took me awhile to come to love my husband’s Jersey high school guy […]